I see my current work as the truth bent to perfection. Set within a meticulously designed world of vanity, beauty, and abundant pattern, recent works are more indicative of a carefully designed stage than the happenstance of real life. By echoing fairy tales and Dutch genre paintings of the 17th century my paintings illustrate adolescent girls and young women in scenes that play on Romantic notions such as the peril of curiosity, the potency of beauty, and the inevitable fall of innocence. Despite referencing the childlike realm of fairy tales however, my works are meant embody the perspective of an adult looking backward to an overly romanticized, fictive past. By identifying archetypal scenarios, the viewer is empowered with an adult sense of prophetic foreboding as a result of our impregnated understanding of moral order in scenes where disaster is otherwise mildly illustrated at best. In this way the works conjure the taunting effect of something the viewer can commiserate with, but cannot control. The viewer can look longingly at this world of innocence, and whether it existed or not, the viewer is always fallen: they have traded their naiveté for the role of a diviner.

-Kyla Zoe Luedtke